For those of you who don’t know, Col and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s day with the rest of the world.  Because his birthday is late January, my birthday is the day before Valentines day and once those are over, we have nothing til Christmas…we decided, the first year we were together, to move the date and to do things a little differently.

We celebrate it on July 14th – which was the date we took our first ever trip together.  Col surprised me with a weekend away in London and the memories are so wonderful, that it was just a perfect fit.

The McMaster Valentine’s day was created!

A month or two ago, I bought Col two tickets to Comedy Sportz Houston.  We decided to use the tickets for the first part of our Valentine’s celebration weekend, so I booked seats for Friday night.

I have to admit I was a little wary of it all.  I’ve never been to an improv show before (and only ever been to live stand-up, once) so I was nervous.

The show was hilarious, there were parts of it I was clutching my ribs, or blinking back tears of hilarity.  It was a seriously fun night and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who’s never been, to try out.  Honest!

The principle is simple, two teams (red and blue) of three comedians face off against each other, the audience picks some of the games, shout out suggestions and ideas and the referee keeps the peace.

In spite of my original hesitation, I loved it! I told Col on the way home, that I can quite easily see it becoming a monthly event, it’s that much fun!

I even picked myself up a C.S.H T-shirt (complete with retired suggestions ‘Elvis’, ‘Jello’ and ‘Tutu’ on the back) and a set of fly swatters – that the audience use to vote for their favourite team when a game is over.

Col enjoyed it also, there were numerous points in the show where we couldn’t even look at each other cause we were laughing so hard.  They have an 8pm (family) show, which we went to and a 10pm (more sassy) show – which we *very* nearly stayed for.  I’m gonna try and arrange an SSA night out to Comedy Sportz Houston when the kids go back to school – it should be a riot!

En route home, it was time for more Baskin Robins (the only place open to get ice cream!), once again I went with their fat free and half fat options of lemon sorbet with chocolate over bananas – yum on both counts!

Saturday, I was woken up to breakfast in bed.  Normally I at least sense that Col isn’t in bed with me, but that morning, apparently I was out cold!

He’d managed to sneak home British bacon, sausages and a single red rose – all without me noticing and it made for a delicious and romantic breakfast in bed (something I’ve never had before!!)

The afternoon was spent doing a spot of shopping and running errands, we went to Theresa’s (as she is out of town on vacation) to check up on her pool, sears and walmart to pick up orders we placed a few weeks ago, we grabbed a Whataburger for lunch cause we were seriously strapped for time and then Col and Sam went off to do man-things, while I stayed home and baked (more later!).

Col and Sam emptied our garage of all of the cardboard that’s been there for going on two years now, they went back to Theresa’s and picked up the chaise lounge (that she wanted rid of, but I wanted to keep) and then, they picked up Magz and Sam’s new sofas from an outgoing SLB couple who was selling off some furniture.

By the time they got to our house, we were already running late, Col then needed a shower (manual labour +100F heat = sweaty betty!) and we arrived to Perry’s around 15 minutes late – oopsy!

Emily, Luke, Heather and Jeff were already there (though they didn’t know each other, so they were sat at different tables in the bar waiting) and soon we were seated, had ordered and were impatiently awaiting the arrival of the delicious, warm, European style bread…oh wait, maybe that was just me!

It was a three course dinner in heaven! French onion soup, lamb chops and flambeed banana’s foster…man, I’m drooling now, even just typing about it.  YUM! And I even indulged in a cheeky martini too, mmmm!

It was really lovely – and, more than that, the people we invited also had a fun night too, which is something I was a little concerned about, cause as much as I love Perry’s, it’s an expensive night out if you don’t like it!

We ended up being in the until after 11pm (time flies when you’re having fun with a group of people you love like family!) when we headed home, full, happy (and with some leftovers for lunch the next day!) and ready to watch some Hell’s Kitchen before bed!

Another Valentines day over…that can only mean one thing…Christmas is next…EEEK!!!